Poland beats EU states to implement Comparative advertising

Obviously keen to demonstrate its European credentials, in June 2000 Poland brought into force amendments to its 1993 Unfair Competition Act.

Topic: Comparative advertising

Who: Legislators in Warsaw

When: June 2000

Where: Poland

What happened:

Obviously keen to demonstrate its European credentials, in June 2000 Poland brought into force amendments to its 1993 Unfair Competition Act. These bring Polish laws affecting comparative advertising into line with the equivalent EU Directive. This was intended to harmonise comparative advertising laws throughout the European Union. Prior to these changes, comparative claims in advertising were effectively forbidden in Poland.

Why this matters:

As Poland is at the head of the queue of Eastern European states knocking on the door of EU membership, it is clearly eager to show itself ready willing and able to talk and walk the European thing. In doing so it is showing up a number of states like Spain, France, Ireland and Finland, who are already in the Union, but despite this failed to meet the 23 April 2000 deadline for implementation of the comparative advertising directive and still show no signs of bringing it into force before 2001. This is particularly problematic so far as France is concerned, since its present knocking copy regime is highly restrictive.